When We Were Warriors by Emma Carroll

Author:Emma Carroll [Emma Carroll]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571350414
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2019-03-25T04:00:00+00:00

7

We ran down the main street to the harbour. By now the wind had dropped, so the night felt mild and calm. The sea was quiet, whispering and sighing over the shingle. Though we were more than used to climbing the lighthouse ladder these days, I still preferred to do it when the weather was gentle like this. I was nervous for other reasons tonight.

Just inside the front door Pixie was waiting, spinning around in circles.

‘I’ll take her down again,’ Cliff said, hoisting her on to his shoulders like Ephraim had taught him to.

‘Go straight back to Eddie,’ I told him. ‘Keep him entertained while we try and find Ephraim’s papers.’

‘Where first?’ asked Esther, once Cliff and Pixie had gone.

‘The top and work our way down?’ I suggested.

Arming ourselves with a couple of the spare torches Ephraim left hanging by the front door, we climbed to the control room at the top of the lighthouse. It was a part of the building we normally kept away from, but I knew there was a desk up there, shelves, drawers, letters, maps, paperwork. It was a serious, grown-up sort of a room. If Ephraim had a passport, a birth certificate, documents from his parents perhaps, there was a good chance we’d find them up there.

Esther took the right-hand side of the room, I went left. I opened drawers, shook out folders, looked under books. I couldn’t find anything that looked personal. On her side of the room, Esther also drew a blank.

‘Nothing here,’ she remarked. ‘Perhaps he keeps private things separate? Like in his bedroom?’

‘Good point,’ I replied, thinking of how I’d once tried to hide things in my sock drawer. So had Sukie: fat lot of good it had done either of us. We’d both been rumbled.

I was also very aware of the minutes ticking away. Pixie might buy us a little extra time, but we couldn’t count on it lasting.

Bypassing the living room and mine and Cliff’s bedroom, we went straight back to where Ephraim slept. His was the floor just up from the lighthouse entrance. There was only one bed in it, a chest for clothes and piles upon piles of books, all stacked against the walls. Though the staircase took us through the room every time we came in and went out, I’d never paid much attention to it. Being here now felt like I was prying. Ephraim was such a private person – and why was that, the doubt-voice asked.

The sock drawer was, unsurprisingly, full of woolly socks. There was nothing under the bed, not even much in the way of dust. I was beginning to think we’d run out of places to look when I saw, in the far corner, a little cubbyhole in the wall. Had it been in the kitchen, I’d have thought it was a bread oven. There was an iron door on the front of it, stamped with BP, the lighthouse’s initials.

‘What d’you think it is?’ I asked Esther as we crouched in front of it.

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